Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Messages from Bizarro World

It is not often that two mortal enemies agree on the same policy and, by design or coincidence, issue fundamentally similar statements on the goal of that policy. The enemies in question here are Iran and Saudi Arabia, Shiite and Sunni dominated regimes respectively. Their goal is world conquest.

On August 14, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, visiting Kabul, Afghanistan to meet with President Hamid Karzai and to deliver a kind of “pep” talk to a gathering of Sunni and Shiite clerics, stated, according to IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency):

“There is no truth on earth but monotheism and following tenets of Islam and there is no way for salvation of mankind but rule of Islam over mankind.” (sic)

The IRNA story went on:

“President Ahmadinejad said nations are today distancing themselves from culture of materialism and selfishness and look for a new way for their prosperity, that is the path of Islam. (sic)…He said that the world is on verge of a great upheaval and ulama at this juncture shoulder a heavy responsibility that is introducing Islam as it is.

“’Nations today have no haven but religion….All of us have the duty to resist the enemy by closing our ranks.’

“The president said Islam belongs to all generations and Muslims should get ready for global mission of Islam.” (sic)

Translation: Sunnis, Shiites, and other Islamic sects should put aside their doctrinal differences and unite to conquer the world, specifically the West. They can resume butchering each other and recalcitrant infidels, too, once that goal is accomplished and the globe has been claimed in Allah’s name.

Ahmadinejad probably watched Saudi cleric Sheik Muhammad Al-Munajid on Saudi television on July 26 and decided to adapt that other mystic’s “sermon” to his own purposes. Very likely he resolved that this heretical Sunni was not going to upstage him on the matter of world conquest. Ahmadinejad is, after all, the next “Mahdi.” He switched a few of the heretic’s words around but the message is the same.

Al-Munajid proclaimed:

“This is a nation of monotheism, and this is the Islam that Allah wants to spread throughout the world, and to rule the land in its entirety. Allah wants this. He sent down the Koran and the Hadith for that purpose.

“Humanity can have no happiness without Islam. Humanity can enjoy no goodness, unless the sun of monotheism, the Koran, and the Sunna shines (sic) upon it. The world without the sun of the divine revelation is a place of eternal darkness, as we can see today – a world of frustration, collapse, injustice, arbitrariness, and wrongdoing. The world today is a jungle – a world of barbarism of all kinds. People in many parts of the world are not happy, because they do not walk in the path of Allah.”

Well, it seems that Western civilization has two monotheistic nemeses: Islam and Christianity. But, the only monotheism that Ahmadinejad recognizes is Islam’s. He made an oblique reference to the role of environmentalism in most Western nations’ policies (“nations are today distancing themsleves from [the] culture of materialism and selfishness”) – Snake Eyes is nothing if not an astute measurer of his enemy’s weaknesses, and he has certainly taken the measure of especially the United States – but this was a point that apparently was over Al-Munajid’s head. He had other things on his mind.

One of the barbaric practices the cleric dwelt on was the colored underwear worn by Westerners. He said in the course of his sermon:

“There are rules of Sharia in everything. We have counted almost 70 rules about how to urinate and defecate. In contrast, how do those beasts in the West answer the call of nature? They stand in front of other people, in toilets in airports and other public places….Even their underwear is colored and not white, so it can conceal all that filth.”

If the reader is laughing, he can be forgiven. But this kind of Islamic lunacy cannot be made up. Al-Munajid can be seen delivering this sermon on Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, complete with English subtitles by MEMRITV, at this link: (http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017819.php). The reader will be forgiven, too, if he at first seems to recognize a reincarnated John Belushi in a white Holy Mary ensemble, sporting a bib-length beard and perhaps rehearsing a variation of his Samurai character from the old Saturday Night Live comedy. Or, he could be taken for a disguised Michael Moore trying on a new slob persona through which to attack the West.

Further, it might tempt the curious to root through the Koran and Hadith and Sunna to see where exactly Allah or Mohammed establishes the rule that white undergarments are de rigueur. (It won’t be found.) However, we may be certain that Al-Munajid wears Fruit of the Loon.

But the dictator’s and the cleric’s mutual message to man is clear: that to “save” him, he must be enslaved, by sword, by guile, or by conversion. These Islamists are as serious about conquest as American religious conservatives are serious about putting God back into government – not that He was ever there to begin with. They would agree with Ahmadinejad and Munajid that nations have “no haven but religion.”

In the meantime, in another quarter of Bizarro World, The New York Times of August 15, under the headline, “U.S. Weighing Terrorist Label for Iran Guards,” reported that President Bush “is preparing to declare that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is a foreign terrorist organization.”

That might seem six years too late.

“President Bush seemed to signal a tougher approach to Iran last week when he called attention to what American officials have said was an active role by the Revolutionary Guard in providing munitions, training and other support to Shiite militants who have been attacking American troops in Iraq. ‘When we catch you playing a nonconstructive role, there will be a price to pay,’ Mr. Bush said of Iran during a news conference on Thursday.”

It is doubtful that this “tough talk” left Ahmadinejad shaking in his boots. To employ the World War II analogy again, declaring the Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization” is the equivalent of Roosevelt hypothetically having declared the Japanese air force or the German Luftwaffe “foreign terrorist organizations,” but not the Japanese or Nazi government, which, by a pragmatic, multi-political policy, would have been exempt from moral judgment. The military of any nation is the means of force of its government; it is not some autonomous entity segregated from politics and that acts independently.

What “price” is Iran paying for continuing to field Iranians to fight Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan? More opportunities to talk about it and to cock a snook at the U.S. over its uranium enrichment program.

According to IRNA, the same day that Ahmadinejad spoke of monotheism, he said,

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has kindly received their Afghan brothers and will continue to do so in future. Minor issues will cannot affect Iran’s policies on Afghanistan.” (sic)

The fact that President Karzai of Afghanistan hosted Ahmadinejad in Kabul should cast grave doubt on Karzai’s status as a loyal and grateful “ally” of the U.S. Is he covertly “closing ranks” with his Iranian “brothers”? It is certain that he and Ahmadinejad did not limit their talks to local cuisine and the comparative merits of Persian and Afghani rugs.

What price is our “moderate ally” Saudi Arabia paying for enabling Sunni “insurgents” in Iraq to kill Americans, and for permitting one of its “holy men” to call Bush, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and all Americans “beasts”? A $20 billion arms package of advanced weaponry with which to perpetuate a Dark Age, feudal monarchy.

This Bizarro World can only be sustained and nurtured, and grow even more bizarre and dangerous, by the continued U.S. policy of concession, conciliation and judgment-suspending tolerance (another name for that policy, Ahmadinejad and Munajid would agree, is submission). Not to mention the policy of altruism and/or moral cowardice, which requires our policymakers to deny reality and repeatedly turn the other cheek.

Ahmadinejad and Munajid, among many other Islamists, keep telegraphing their punches, past, present and future. But one half of our Western policymakers have their heads in the sand, and the other half's minds are floating in the ethereal realms of Platonic forms. Neither stance facilitates communication.

1 comment:

djr
said...

In defense of colored underwear

As goofy as it sounds, I think [potentially] filth-hiding underwear routinely worn by Westerners is another manifestation of wealth and prosperity. Having to detect filth is pretty useless, as almost anyone here will take a nice scolding hot shower anytime of their choice, sometimes twice a day.